Analysis: What's Up With the Title?

Strange indeed. Wilfred Owen might have made the understatement of the century when he called this one "Strange Meeting." As a first impression, it doesn't give too much away and sets a sort of mysterious vibe as we dive into the poem. It helps to create suspense, too, because it raises all sorts of questions—who is meeting? What's so strange about it? Where's it going down?

We don't realize just how strange this meeting actually is until several lines in. when we find out they're in hell. And of course, it gets weirder. At the very end of the poem we realize that our speaker is chatting it up with a guy he just killed. It doesn't get stranger than that.

Although there are so many twists and turns in this poem, the title never really abandons us. It's echoed in the middle of the poem when they first meet with, "Strange friend" and as the drama builds to the very last line, we can't help but the feel the explosive impact of the title long after the poem is over.